All posts tagged zhang yimou

Some how we grabbed back to back sci-fi ventures, yet they were polar opposers. The first was Vivaldi's Four Seasons, except by Vivaldi I mean the Wong Kar-Wai– the man who embodies the very whole of the Hong Kong genre by the virtue of how far above it he stands, and by Four Seasons I mean a place called 2046. The key to understanding this film is that 2046 is a place in the mind, figuratively and literally. It is not a time, except in the sense of being a timeless hypothesis for the time-traveling protagonist trapped in an emotional time-loop. This is the one director who has kept my hope alive for Asian non-Japanese cinema; the complex mirror of real-life, imagined life, story life, and Faye Wong's life (drool) when they reach 2047 redeems the unforgivable creative suicide Zhang Yimou took going from Hero to House of the Flying Faggots.

Am I too harsh? No. Not since I realized that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was but serendipity held together by only the strength of an amazing cast and the aural gesticulations of Yo-Yo-Ma. It certainly wasn't cosmically overrated Ang Lee doing the heartstring-tuggin', tho he sure fancies himself the Wizard of Az. Wong Kar-Wai gives us nothing but achingly beautiful shot after shot without ever abusing scenic national parks in China. Like no other director, he takes the most impossibly colored shots and arranges them to tell us with space as well as subject what his characters desire. If you guess my favorite shot in the whole movie, I'll give you $100, well-deserved.

So, with that mouthful of cud chewed, I'll turn on impulse 9 :furious: and say if you want a good action film, Equilibrium is some serious fun. There are few things done wrong for a movie of this budget and premise, and if you can suspend a touch of snobbery at all the stolen references to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, it'll be that good kind of cheese to go with your popcorn. Their Gun Kata martial art is actually pretty neat later on. It's a blast! (If you smiled, then you've passed the corn test, go rent it.)